Exhibition duration: November 5 - December 31, 2022
Opening hours: Fridays to Sundays, 3 - 6 pm, or by appointment
Curator: Stephanie Kloss

Monday, November 7, 2022, 6:30 pm
Zvi Hecker in conversation with Eyal Weizman (EN)
Host: Heimo Lattner

The buildings of the Israeli architect Zvi Hecker (*1931) as well as his drawings are considered today to be part of a "collective architectural consciousness“. At the same time, he has always succeeded in evading canonization. Contrary to all efforts, his work cannot be classified by architectural-historical interpretations or isms until today. His work on architecture is a process that has always remained open over 60 years. Since the genesis of his work, as a totality of the built and unbuilt, is based to a very substantial degree on hand drawing, its observation forms a basis for understanding his concepts and ideas.
"I draw, because I have to think" is then one of Hecker's most quoted statements. "Since our hand is never completely controlled by our mind, it can create signs that remain open to interpretation. Again and again I was surprised to see how hand drawing can create possibilities that, in all likelihood, I could not have consciously imagined." Zvi Hecker sees himself as an artist whose medium is architecture. His designs develop from the interplay between the function of the buildings, the local conditions and materials, and the images of cultural memory. For more than half a century, he has created buildings that combine artistic conviction and social interaction. At the center of his thinking is the human being, and consequently he sees the task of architects as creating shelter for people. Whether from bombs, the sun or the rain. Zvi Hecker's sketchbooks are the containers in which his "wild anarchic" thinking has been deposited; they provide information about his artistic universe. With the exhibition "Pages Of An Open Book" Hecker allows an intimate insight into this sometimes largely hidden terrain of his work for the first time. He left the selection of the open pages to the curator. It does not follow a chronology or a concentration on specific buildings, but rather their inherent poetry: "Poetry is the most precise expression of our need for precision." (ZH)

For further information, please see here.

Please also see another exhibition "Zvi Hecker – Entwürfe für die Berliner Mitte" on Thursday, November 24, 2022, 7 pm at Mitte Museum, Pankstraße 47, 13357 Berlin